De motu animalium

Rome: Ex Typographia Angeli Bernabò, 1680. Full Description:

BORELLI, Giovanni Alfonso. De motu animalium. Rome: Ex Typographia Angeli Bernabò, 1680.

First edition. Two quarto volumes (8 1/4 x 6 1/8 inches; 209 x 157 mm). [12], 376, [12]; [8], 520 pp. With eighteen folding engraved plates numbered "Prima" through "Decimaoctava."

Uniformly bound in contemporary vellum. Title on spines in old ink manuscript. All edges speckled brown. Some soiling to vellum. Volume II with some toning and foxing. Volume I quite clean. Some very small closed marginal tears in Volume I in signatures TT2-ZZ, all except a few, neatly repaired (truncated) and none affecting text. Armorial book-plate of Lister Holte of Aston in Warwickshire on front pastedown of each volume. Previous owner Ippolito de Hencini of Pistoia "Ippoliti de Hencinis Pistoriensis ex Legato Authoris old ink inscription on front free endpaper of each volume. Some of the folding plates reinforced along folds. Overall a very good set.

"After Descartes, Borelli was the principal founder of the iatrophysical school, one of the two opposing seventeenth-century medical philosophies (the other being the school of iatrochemistry) that grew out of an increasing concern with the function as well as the structure of human anatomy. Inspired by Harvey's mathematical demonstration of the circulation of the blood, Borelli, a trained mathematician and physicist, conceived of the body as a machine whose phenomena could be explained entirely by the laws of physics. Borelli was the first to recognize that bones were levers powered by the action of muscle, and devoted the first volume of his work to the external motions produced by this interaction, with extensive calculations on the motor forces of muscles. The second volume treats of internal motions, such as the movements of the muscles them-selves, circulation, respiration, secretion and nervous activity. Borelli was the first to explain heartbeat as a simple muscular contraction, and to ascribe its action to nervous stimulation; he was also the first to describe circulation as a simple hydraulic system." (Norman 270).

"Borelli originated the neurogenic theory of the heart's action and first suggested that the circulation resembled a simple hydraulic system. He was the first to insist that the heart beat was a simple muscular contraction. One of the founders of biomechanics, Borelli was a representative of the Iatro-Mathematical School, which treated all physiological happenings as rigid consequences of the laws of physics and mechanics" (Garrison-Morton)

Dibner 190. Garrison and Morton 762. Grolier/Horblit 13. Heirs of Hippocrates 315. Lilly Library, Notable Medical Books, p. 91. Norman Library 270.

HBS 69298.

$6,500. (Inventory #: 69298)